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Europe Edition

Ireland, North Korea, Myanmar: Your Wednesday Briefing

(Want to get this briefing by email? Here’s the sign-up.)

Good morning.

Here’s what you need to know:

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Credit...Barbara Walton/European Pressphoto Agency

• The International Olympic Committee’s decision next week on how to punish Russia for doping will be informed by the diaries of a complicit Russian chemist.

The previously unreported journals speak to a key issue for Olympic officials: the state’s involvement in the widespread sports fraud. We got an exclusive look.

Consequences are expected to extend beyond the next Winter Games, as the cheating that investigators confirmed stretched across seasons, sports and years. (Above, Team Russia at the Games in Sochi in 2014.)

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Credit...Paulo Nunes dos Santos for The New York Times

• Ireland’s deputy prime minister resigned hours before a no-confidence vote was due in Parliament, averting a snap election.

The crisis left Dublin vulnerable before talks on the future of its border with Britain after Brexit. Dublin fears that the reintroduction of any kind of border controls would revive political and sectarian tensions. (Above, a former border post to Northern Ireland.)

Meanwhile in Britain, Facebook and Twitter promised to aid a parliamentary inquiry on Russian meddling in the Brexit vote.

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Credit...Leszek Szymanski/European Pressphoto Agency

• Our chief diplomatic correspondent in Brussels looked at wider trends behind the rise of populists in Central and Eastern Europe. (Above, a nationalist march in Warsaw on Poland’s Independence Day this month.)

What ties them together, a Czech scholar said, is that populists “ride the wave of anxiety — about globalization, migration and new phenomena — and appeal to those looking for some protection.”

But the variety of the populists’ targets means that there is no united movement that will spread, a British historian said. “There is no single virus,” he said, “and I don’t think there is a lot of staying power.”

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• In Washington, Senate Republicans took a significant step toward passing a tax overhaul, with a key panel giving its approval and several wavering senators indicating their support. Above, and here in more detailed form, is a look at the bill’s likely impact on middle-class families.

Meanwhile, allegations of sexual improprieties that have entangled John Conyers, the longest serving member of the House, have led to calls for a reckoning over the Democratic Party’s rules of seniority.

And our White House correspondents retraced President Trump’s changing story on the “Access Hollywood” tape, which has stunned advisers.

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Credit...Ludovic Marin/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

• A new study, drawing on the cellphone call records of more than a million city dwellers in southern Europe, suggested that peak phone call times moved in tandem with the lengthening of days during summer and shorter days of winter.

It could be further evidence that the chemicals that govern our body clocks are linked to events in the sky.

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Credit...John Macdougall/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

• The political deadlock in Berlin has not been enough to shake investors’ faith that the Germans will work it out. But the twin pillars of their industry, precision machinery and automobiles, risk being overtaken by competitors from China and Silicon Valley.

• The world’s biggest oil producers can cheer about a price surge but, as they gather in Vienna, they face a conundrum on whether to extend production cuts.

• WeWork has collected billions of dollars from investors by providing places for people to work. Now, it is buying Meetup, a social network meant to bring people together in their off time.

• A U.S. judge delayed a trade-secrets trial between Uber and Alphabet’s self-driving car unit after the emergence of a letter that described Uber’s efforts to monitor competitors and hide data.

Here’s a snapshot of global markets.

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Credit...KCNA, via European Pressphoto Agency

• North Korea fired an improved intercontinental ballistic missile, its first missile test in nearly three months. (Above, a test in September.) President Trump reacted cautiously. [The New York Times]

• A former Croat leader claimed to have drunk poison in a Hague courtroom, throwing his war crimes hearing into chaos. [The New York Times]

• European and African leaders are gathering in Ivory Coast for a summit meeting centered on migration. [Bloomberg]

• A court in Pamplona, Spain, heard final arguments in a gang-rape trial that prompted a nationwide debate about how cases involving abuse of women are handled. [Associated Press]

• A German mayor who was praised for taking in refugees was stabbed in the neck by an angry resident, but he vowed not to alter his policy of openness. [The New York Times]

• A Turkish-Iranian gold trader is expected to testify today in a New York trial on a billion-dollar scheme to smuggle gold for oil in violation of Iran sanctions that risks straining U.S. ties to Turkey. [The New York Times]

• A federal court in Washington found Ahmed Abu Khattala guilty on terrorism charges arising from the 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya, but acquitted him of murdering the American ambassador and others. [The New York Times]

• In Myanmar, Pope Francis avoided using the name of the country’s persecuted Rohingya minority in a much-anticipated speech, heeding advice by church leaders not to put the country’s tiny Catholic population at risk of retaliation. [The New York Times]

Tips, both new and old, for a more fulfilling life.

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Credit...Natalia Mantini for The New York Times

• The movie stylist Miyako Bellizzi offers tips for style on a budget.

• Gardening right now might not sound like much fun. But next year you’ll regret all the things you didn’t do.

• Recipe of the day: Hearty split pea soup is even better with bacon. (Many, but not all, readers agreed.)

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Lucio Fontana, who died in 1968, was best known for his slashes on canvas. An exhibition in Milan is casting a new light on a less known part of his work that sets him at the forefront of art installation.CreditCredit...Guglielmo Mattioli/New York Times. Technology by Samsung.

• An exhibition in Milan is casting a new light on the work of the artist Lucio Fontana. Experience his groundbreaking installations in our latest 360 video.

• Meghan Markle will become a symbol among symbols in the British royal family, our fashion critic writes. But some commentators warned that the powerful symbolism did not diminish structural racism across Britain.

• Our travel writer went to Nicaragua to explore the legacy of one of the great heroes of the Spanish language: Rubén Darío.

• In Bangkok, firefighters spend more time removing snakes from homes than fighting fires. Some cobras have even entered homes through toilets.

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Credit...Billy H.C. Kwok for The New York Times

Call it the Trumpchi conundrum. China finally feels it has a car capable of following Japan, Germany and South Korea into the U.S. market. But its biggest roadblock might be its name.

The Chinese automaker GAC Motor insists that its popular Trumpchi vehicles, which went into mass production in 2010, have nothing to do with the U.S. president. Above, a Trumpchi electric car.

Even so, when we reported last week on plans to sell the Trumpchi in the U.S. by 2019, GAC officials admitted that they might rethink the branding.

Automotive history, littered as it is with unfortunate car names, suggests this is probably a good idea.

There’s been the Mazda Scrum Wagon, the Mitsubishi Lettuce, the Nissan Homy Super Long and the Isuzu GIGA 20 Light Dump, not to be confused with the Honda Life Dunk.

Volkswagen offered the Tiguan, a German mash-up of tiger and iguana, Ford shortened cougar into Kuga for some markets, and Renault famously had Le Car.

General Motors has long been ridiculed for marketing the Chevy Nova in Spanish-speaking countries, where the name translates to “doesn’t go” (“no va”). The Nova actually sold well in Latin America.

GAC officials told our Shanghai bureau chief that, in Chinese, Trumpchi sounds a little like “passing on happiness.” Any decision on changing the name, they said, would be announced in January — at an auto show in Detroit.

Charles McDermid contributed reporting.

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Your Morning Briefing is published weekday mornings and updated online.

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